Emily Walker

“If what happened in our divorce was vengeance, it was an existential vengeance, not a personal one. It had very little to do with me. And it existed on another plane from our love story.”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

“Getting dressed meant juggling two opposing forces: the need to select an outfit that would help me fit in while simultaneously avoiding the desire to rip my skin off.”
― Marian Schembari, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole

“I hope because I was open about what happened to me, my children will insist on intimacy, on knowing their partner deeply, on being known deeply. I hope they will talk to their partners about money, about what will happen if the partnership ends. I hope that as they build trust in their relationships, they never lose sight of their own authority, their own voice, their own intuition. I hope they will move toward people who are in pain, rather than away. I hope they will understand that every person has experiences that make them who they are. I hope they will fall in love with abandon as I did with their father. I hope they will know, from watching me, that if everything falls apart, they can get up and piece together something new.”
― Belle Burden, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

“I had internalized the names I was called - sensitive, moody, irritable, difficult - but they never felt accurate to my experience. What I felt was pain.”
― Marian Schembari, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole